


Kiss and kill

by yankmywand



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 00:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yankmywand/pseuds/yankmywand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim can't really remember what he has done, and it has consumed him completely.</p><p>Based on a poem by Richard Siken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kiss and kill

It was cold in the flat. The fire had burned out long ago. Skinny fingers, bony with knuckles sticking out through the skin held a cigarette between them. Between forefinger and middle finger sat a cigarette that wouldn’t, absolutely refused to burn out. He brought it to his lips and they were dry. The cold had taken them as well. The cigarette smoke burnt on his chapped lips, bloodied and swollen. But it was a good pain, a sort of pain he felt he deserved. A sort of pain that he could endure just for one reason, a fucking good reason, wasn’t it? Playing with something between his cold fingers, pieces of metal, round, kept together on a ball chain. Moran would have laughed. _Sentiment, Jim? Sentiment kills, you told me that._

Yes, sentiment killed. Sentiment brought nothing but trouble.

It grew, like a tumor, as if Pandora’s Box had been opened and everything that was good was eaten up by all the things that were bad. Except, it was the other way around, for Jim. He was perfectly fine with it being unsaid. Until one night when they were laying side by side on the tiger skin in the study, by the fire that once had kept them warm. He laughed, he drank whiskey from the bottle while straddling Moran, and he felt almost… normal? That was when it slipped out. And it changed everything.  It changed the feral eyes of his tiger into loving gems that burned through him.

There were memories scattered all around the room. Sebastian’s laughter was in the corner, where the armchair once had been standing. His hands were on the edge of the sofa. Calloused, big, like paws of a tiger, grasping for Jim and pulling him towards him. Those damn hands. Ash fell to his knee when he shivered. No. Wrong. Sebastian’s hands were everywhere. But his eyes, they were by the door to the bedroom. **_Come to bed._** _I’m working. **You have to sleep.** I’m working **. I’ll carry you**. I said, I’m working, tiger, go to bed._

He could pluck the pieces of memories up like a deck of cards and deal them out, build a house, or let them fly around him. Most of all, he liked to lay them around him on the cold bed, and let them consume him. How long Jim would lay on the cold bed was different from time to time. He collected them, later, and put them back in the photo album he kept where there should have been a heart. Sometimes, he could even make a person. With eyes, with hands and with a smile so bright it blinded Jim at times. He could put together the memories that he had, and sometimes imagine the rest.

There was nothing in the flat anymore but for a sofa and a bed. Dust laid thick on the mantel piece and the scrapes from nails on the hardwood floor was still there. He was sure that blood was still on his hands when he washed them. The blood that would never come off, it stained his clothes, and he could never get it off. That’s why he never got his hands dirty, they would forever be stained and it was tedious. Atrocious, even, with the amount of time he spent with his hands under the tap, waiting for the red to wash off his gnarled hands. It never happened.

The flames would consume him at night, the flames that ate and spread and greedily took Sebastian from him. Those were the memories he had the least from. He remembered pieces of the night, when he ruined everything. He remembered Sebastian’s scratching nails on the hardwood floor. He remembered Sebastian finally stop fighting him, and those eyes giving him permission. That was when he should have stopped – but he didn’t. Then, he remembered the fire, and how it burned the skin off of the bones. All the blood.

The cigarette fell to the floor but he didn’t bother picking it up, why would he? It was everlasting, just like him. Everything seemed to go in slow motion, but the thoughts in his head went too fast.

The smell of smoke caught in his nostrils, and he knew it. Just by thinking of the fire, it would burn him. It was too early for it, though. The flames came at night, when he was sleeping. And he was painfully awake now. But the unmistakable scent of burnt fabric wafted up at him from the floor as he sank down, back hunched against the backrest in the sofa. The picture in his hand was perfect. It was just how he imagined it to be. Two eyes, a smile. Jim smiled back at the picture, whispering to it as he felt the searing flames consume him.

“I love you.” The words that ruined everything.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to read the poem, you can find it here: http://theradiodaze.tumblr.com/post/61924660516/sorry-about-the-bony-elbows-sorry-we-lived-here


End file.
